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unfortunately no I am from India but they are trying to cooperate with microsoft lately to help students so maybe in future I hope
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MohammedAug 11 '09 at 15:53

4

You could always just use Google Docs or Zoho.com to get an online word processor ;-)
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Ivo Flipse♦Aug 11 '09 at 16:18

7

I'm fascinated by the prices quoted in various answers for student editions. MS has made their pricing structure so complicated, no one can figure out what anything costs...
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Michael KohneAug 12 '09 at 3:24

14 Answers
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Edit: Since the creation of this post, many if not most of the supporters of OpenOffice.org have migrated to LibreOffice, which was originally based on OpenOffice.org and now has a more active development than its parent project.

Great program. Easy to use. Just like microsoft, but without macros, so you elimintate some of the viruses you can get
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The Green FrogAug 18 '09 at 14:14

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@Dynamic - You can write macros for OOo, it even has a VBA compliance mode to let it run some (but not all) macros designed for MS Office.
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tj111Aug 24 '09 at 20:21

This answer has a lot of traction. I wonder if in the interim period you have switched to LibreOffice? With the pace of development better handling of MS formats if you have switched, maybe you should edit the answer. (and I agree with the usefulness, it's all I've used for work, school, and at home for 2 years)
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DennisOct 4 '11 at 19:12

Another alternative not yet mentioned is LaTeX. It is not a wysiwyg editor like Word or Libreoffice, but it is specifically geared for publication quality typesetting, and especially useful for academic work. It has specific abilities to typeset math, and also has tools to work with a bibliographic database and automatically format your references and footnotes.

There are several free/open-source distributions, includeing mikTeX, and TeXLive.

You may also want to try the Google office products: Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets and Google Presentation. Over the last year they have added a lot of features, such that now they are pretty close to what you'd find in a offie suite, minus the fancy features you'd never use. They also export quite nicely to Microsoft Office and other formats when you need to and you don't have to worry about loosing your work when your computer crashes or the program/browser crashes (they save automatically, almost too automatic).

Another option/new commer is Office Live--Microsoft's answer to Google Docs, etc. It has some nice features that Google Docs doesn't have, but is also free...so you can use both :)

Just took a look at right now, and I really can't see anything that I would use in Word that is missing in Google Docs, but for example, they only have 11 fonts. But something like this, I don't see being problem unless your trying to make something "fancy".
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Darryl HeinAug 12 '09 at 8:09

Is it just me, or the entire work behind this program was only to copy exactly MSOffice 2003? I mean, at least OpenOffice is trying to be an alternative, even if it copies most of the original, it still provides something a bit different. This Kingsoft seems only made to copy the exact MS Office, and provide it for free. That may make some people feel better that they are not "pirating" the official version, but to me it feels the same, it's only an exact copy.
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GnoupiJan 1 '10 at 11:18

1

Kingsoft Office is faster than OpenOffice, I have no problem with that...
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thenonhackerJan 21 '10 at 22:55

it's not free by the way, only 90-days trial
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SergeyAug 14 '11 at 7:27

there is a free version.. however, still far from MS Office.
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Hoàng LongApr 26 '13 at 8:52

What happens after the 90-day period? The website and program is a rather unspecific about that part.
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Lo SauerSep 1 '13 at 12:39